X264 video encoding PC hardware ?

[Mr. Monte]

Will be in a position in April to build/buy a new PC for video encoding (home digital camcorder editing and x264 encoding. Not having an unlimited wallet for this...trying to stay on a a reasonable curve. What main things should I look for. What items should I not skimp on ( provide most significant performance increase) and which ones can I skimp on. Basically is there and order of precedence?

What processor and motherboard would you recommend?
At what point is the amount of RAM overkill?

I know a lot of things can change in 4 months..so it maybe better to wait..but at least I can get started looking.

Thanks in advance

[Blue_MiSfit]

Get the fastest CPU with the most cores you can afford. Everything else is secondary.

I haven't stayed as up-to-date as I should, but the Core i7 is still a great performer. Just make sure you get a quad-core version with HyperThreading. If you're in the USA, this is a pretty awesome deal: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115213 (2.93 GHz Core i7 870 on an LGA 1156 socket)

It's also hard to ignore the six core Phenom II X6 1100T at 3.3 GHz for a little less coin: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103913. In fact, if these benchmarks hold true for recent x264 (they use older builds), then the Phenom II is a huge winner here. It does draw more power than the i7 though, and dissipate more heat. Just something to consider.

Unless you're doing multiple HD encodes in parallel, there's not much reason to have more than 4GB of RAM. Maybe 8 at the most. Go Windows 7 x64 though, hands down. If you don't play games, get a cheap graphics card, or get a motherboard with onboard graphics. It doesn't make a speck of difference for x264 encoding. I'd suggest a pair of fast mechanical hard drives (I'm a fan of the Western Digital Caviar Black series). Split the first one and make the main partition your OS drive, and the secondary your outputs folder. Use the second hard drive for your sources.

Then again, maybe "reasonable" means something entirely different to you :)

Finally, the new Intel "Sandy Bridges" CPUs are due to come out very soon, as in a couple weeks from now. I'd definitely hold off on anything until you see how this affects pricing for everything else. x264 will supposedly get a nice boost on a Sandy Bridges CPU :devil:

Derek

[Mr. Monte]

Derek,

Thanks for the input. It was curious to see your reply on RAM though. One of the PC forums I visit said the CPU is not the bottleneck for encoding and that getting a faster CPU would not improve performance as much. They stated the memory channel and size is the bottle neck. Apparently cache is overrated for encoding also, since the info is constantly changing.

I will wait for the Sandy Bridges.....especially to see how much it improves..since as you stated the newer 6 core AMD is much cheaper than the i7 6 cores.

Doug

[Groucho2004]

One of the PC forums I visit said the CPU is not the bottleneck for encoding and that getting a faster CPU would not improve performance as much. They stated the memory channel and size is the bottle neck.

I'd like to know which forum that is. This is utter nonsense, especially when it comes to encoding with x264.
MPEG-2 encoders benefit a bit more from memory speed but even there the differences are marginal.

I will wait for the Sandy Bridges

Good call. From what I read on Anandtech, these will be very fast and energy efficient, see here (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridge-preview-three-wins-in-a-row/8).

[Dark Shikari]

Derek,

Thanks for the input. It was curious to see your reply on RAM though. One of the PC forums I visit said the CPU is not the bottleneck for encoding and that getting a faster CPU would not improve performance as much. They stated the memory channel and size is the bottle neck.They have no idea how encoders work. Memory speed is practically irrelevant. Memory speed is usually only the bottleneck for applications that do very little processing relative to the amount of data input. This is of course not true of encoders, as one can deduce with some basic math: just calculate the amount of raw frame data going through the encoder and compare to the time taken.

Apparently cache is overrated for encoding also, since the info is constantly changing.This is even more wrong. While a larger L2 cache isn't enormously useful, this is because the information isn't constantly changing: it changes slow enough, and predictably enough, that hardware prefetch can effectively cover most of it.

L1 cache misses are a very significant issue as the working set is larger than a typical L1 data cache (32KB), but all Intel chips (at least the fast ones) have identical L1 cache sizes.

[Mr. Monte]

Thanks everyone. When I start researching hardware, ig to the PC hardware forums...but since my main concern was video editing and encoding, I wanted to get the members here input. I will ask here in this thread in April to get a more defined hardware solution.

Again thanks

Doug :thanks: